“In your force or marriage system your ancestors, as we have seen, took their wives by stealing or forcibly taking them perhaps from other tribes. From that primitive time to this, the force part in matrimony has of course gradually diminished. The woman was allowed more and more privileges and freedom from that time to this. But during all this time, when physical force and man-made laws were used, the man got the woman so completely under his control by his superior physical power and by placing her in an atmosphere of masculine dependence, that she has largely and often unconsciously become his industrial, social and sexual slave. He hems her in by almost insuperable difficulties on all sides, and then uses her as his slave and sexual tool under the sanctity of his particularly established system of matrimony.
“Your man, in the sexual world, closely resembles your landlord in the industrial world. The landlord fences the laborer off from the vacant land so that the laborer can not apply his labor to land, from which all wealth must come, and then makes a contract with the laborer to the laborer’s great disadvantage. So your man, in order to get sexual dominion, first creates an industrial and social world, in which a free, independent woman can scarcely make a living, no matter how hard and long she toils. He makes the money pass through his hands and makes all the other laws to suit his purpose. Your men deprive your women of nearly everything that the man considers sacred.
“In the social world, your man appoints himself suitor, and compels his sweetheart to remain at home, waiting for his appearance, for his courtship. If she goes forth to solicit the love of her choice, he buries her with contempt, so that none of his masculine companions will choose her thereafter for a life partner. By this he dooms her to his contemptible financial and industrial world, where she has to earn her own living under great disadvantages. In the sexual world, your man is still more cruel and aggressive. Instead of letting the woman regulate the sexual affairs to suit herself, like all other chaste creatures do, the man seems to be the lord and manager there too. We want to keep in mind that with the higher inferior animal, which enjoys comparatively perfect sexual freedom, and which lives a comparatively chaste life, the female regulates all sexual relations.
“But this is not all by any means. Do you not think that under your marriage system there are many mothers now that would not be mothers if women were not dependent on man industrially? Do you not think that women, as well as men, would be much freer and happier, if women enjoyed social equality and freedom? Do you not think that your wives give birth to many children that would not be born in a state of sexual freedom, if women were not the dupes of men and of the marriage superstition, in which the man appoints himself manager and his wedded wife obeyer? Do you not think that thousands upon thousands of married men and women live or stay together that do not really love each other, that would not stay together an hour in a world like ours, where one is as capable of supporting himself or herself as another? Do you not think that the artificial constraint of marriage tends to produce an abnormal sexual passion? Do you not think that a large number of women are driven to houses of sin and shame by your marriage system? Some that are ‘unfortunately’ married, and others that wanted to marry, but could not marry to suit themselves? Do you not think that your bonds of matrimony creates an unsatisfied novelty for sex relations that can be properly adjusted only by a wider range of individual freedom? Do you not think that a married woman, under your social and industrial system, is a slave to husband and family, no matter how good and kind they may treat her as a wife or a mother?
“Do you not think that bearing and nursing offspring is productive labor? Should not mothers receive equal pay for administering maternal cares to dependent children as a laborer receives for his physical labor? But are your men doing that? Are they not putting off more than half of all the physical productive labor onto the women, and then incidentally, and often superstitiously, burdening them with bearing and nursing unwelcome offspring? Do you not think that the thoughts, the temperament and the state of happiness and contentment of the mother are transmitted to the child long before it is born? How can the babe be otherwise than the parental natures out of which it is built? Do you think that a frowny, irritated, poverty-stricken, overburdened, careworn, slavish mother can give birth to a child having directly opposite traits and temperament? Do you not think that your marriage system produces untidy, slovenly and careless men and women, while, on the contrary, our system is just the opposite? Notice how much more slovenly and untidy your married men and women are, as a rule, than those who are not married. We are beaux and sweethearts as long as we live. A rude, careless, untidy, cruel person is not appreciated in our society. He is not likely to leave many offspring. The survival of the fittest with us is in full bloom; with you, in the human family, it is comparatively dead; because, if they are once married, they are bound to stay together, whether they are tidy or filthy and slovenly. Do you not think that your marriage system has caused the abnormal sexual function in your human being as we now find him on earth? Do you not take the management of the sex relations out of the hands of the women, where it properly belongs, and place it practically under the control of the man?”
“It is true, no doubt, that a husband and wife often ignore the rule of sexual purity, according to your standard of it,” said Rev. Dudley; “but I do not see why men and women should be more excessive sexually in a wedded state than in a state of sexual freedom. Why cannot purity be practiced in matrimony?”
“There are many reasons why there can be no sexual purity, as a whole, in your wedlock.
“The vast majority of the wedded people, as near as I can ascertain, believe that there can be no sexual excesses between a married husband and wife. They seem to believe that as soon as an officer or priest has mumbled a few words over the contracting parties, the law of sexual purity can thereafter not be broken.
“In your marriage system, too, you have everything perverted and twisted out of the natural order. Let us look at a few of these perversions. We find, as I have told you, that the females of the inferior animals, as well as the highly developed Marsites, regulate their own sexual affairs; that the female solicits the sexual co-operation of the male whenever she desires procreative assistance. The male, as a rule, does not meddle with sexual affairs, only when the female solicits his love, and he keeps on loving until the female rejects further love, when he will cease, or is forced to cease by an independent, self-reliant female. We see here, then, that the male has not the faculty of properly adjusting and regulating the sexual function to such a high degree as the female, but that he receives the guidance from the female. This holds good in the orders of the inferior animals and with the Marsites.
“In your marriage system things are just the reverse. You instituted, as I believe, your system of marriage by compulsion. You first captured, then bought, etc., your wife or wives. Under these conditions, you took the sexual control away from your women and vested it in the man. But, as we have seen, the man does not possess an excellent faculty for properly regulating and adjusting the sexual relation. He was deficient here in what he undertook to do. He forcibly made himself a guide in a field of labor where, by his very organization, he naturally required guidance himself.
“So the man, by forcibly assuming control of the sexual relations, has not only caused an abnormal sexual function in himself, but by his excesses has caused an excess in the woman also; so that if the woman could be free at once and assume control of the sexual affairs, she could, with her present excess, not begin immediately to live a perfectly chaste life, but would require some time of freedom and independence to make a harmonious and normal sexual adjustment, which can never be brought about in a state of wedlock, in which a woman is socially and industrially dependent on the man. Thus, we see, that the excessive passions have been transmitted and accumulated from generation to generation, and therefore require some time for their elimination.
“Your promiscuous retirement is another cause of your sexual excess. Each individual should have his or her separate apartment and nightly retire alone.
“You will notice a vast difference between our mothers and yours. Our mothers have no particular cares. They need not gather eggs to buy a baby’s frock with. They need not ask a husband for a nickel or a dollar. They have no jealous husband to watch them and to dictate to them. They have nothing to frown about. They have all the money they want without asking for it, and earn more every day. They receive as much pay per day as the strongest man or the greatest genius. They can write to, or converse with, any man, woman, or child. No one can be jealous, for they belong to no one but themselves. They have not given themselves away and ‘promised to obey.’ They can go out walking or riding with whom they please or with whom they can get. They are at liberty to invite any one, be invited by any one, or go and see any one they please, if they can make a mutual agreement. The mothers, or those who are about to be mothers, can visit in any family, community, or nation where the family usher finds room for them, and still receive the same daily pay as a man or woman who works at home. Besides all this, she receives, in her maternal work, all the assistance possible. In a word, she is perfectly free and independent, economically, socially and sexually.
“Just think if one of our girls or mothers were compelled to live a while in your cruel, poor, superstitious and jealous world! Would they not think that they were in a worse than an orthodox hell? Burdened down with the labor and care and robbed of personal freedom! Do you not think that they would make every effort to return to their native world of wealth, of true love, and of unbounded freedom?
“Of course, our ancient history shows, that our world passed through similar cruel, poor, and slavish stages as your world is in now, and it is almost positive that the evolution of a higher state of intelligence will wipe out of existence all your present poverty, superstition, jealousy, and slavery, and put in place of it a social and industrial system that will produce, by voluntary co-operation, an unlimited amount of wealth; and, at the same time, provides a boundless degree of individual freedom to every man, woman and child, for, with a certain amount of intelligence, always goes a certain stage of social and industrial development.”
“I must admit, Mr. Midith, that your system of sexual freedom would be a grand one if our men and women were ripe for it,” said Rev. Dudley; “but I fear that we do not possess sufficient culture to make a success of it yet. I fear that we are, as you said, too cruel, jealous, and too superstitious. But there is one question I would like to ask, and that is, how do you, in a state of sexual freedom, prevent premature maternity? Must a woman be of a certain age before she is allowed to become a mother?”
“In the first place, we have no such a word as must in our social and sexual system,” replied Mr. Midith. “If premature motherhood is objectionable, it should be discouraged and discontinued for the evil and wrong it produces. If it does not bring evil consequences on any one, it can not be said to be premature. We believe, however, that it may be premature in a certain geologic age, and that it does entail evil consequences. Under these conditions it arrests physical and mental development. But, in time, under sexual freedom, the procreative function will be so accurately adjusted that it will act only in accord with the most vigorous life, and then there can be no more a desire for premature maternity. We instruct our children on these points of premature motherhood as clearly as we can, beginning at the age of childhood. We esteem physical and mental perfection above all other things. Anything that impairs them is strenuously avoided. Public opinion, the strongest social force, is also against it.”